Field
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for receiving a broadcast stream. In particular, the present invention relates to receiving key information and additional information through the broadcast stream, selecting one of a plurality of predetermined functions based on the additional information, and performing the selected function in response to a control signal identified by the key information.
Description of the Related Art
In existing broadcast systems, such as MHEG and MHP, applications can be transmitted through a broadcast stream and executed by the receiver. The application may allow certain behaviour to be trigged by user input, but this has to be programmed into the application itself. Accordingly, the application has to be executed in order for the functionality to be available to a user. The launching of the broadcaster application may be done either in direct response to some signalling, such as that defined in TS 102 809, or via a menu or other UI provided by the manufacturer. Alternatively, a receiver may implement software that automatically runs applications provided by the broadcaster. This gives the broadcaster the ability to directly monitor for key presses and display a web page when the relevant key is pressed. However, as the entire application must be transmitted to the receiver in order to make use of this additional functionality, such systems require a large amount of data to be sent to the receiver. Also, there are often interoperability issues, as the receiver software does not always work in the same way.